Mumbai – Being the Change

I’ve been back from my trip to Mumbai for about a week now, so it’s probably about time I get some thoughts down on paper (or nearest virtual equivalent) before those thoughts drop out of my mind completely. “Teach for Australia” is part of a global network of organisations who all essentially do the same thing: put graduates into schools in disadvantaged communities. This network (Teach for All) had their big annual conference/workshop thingy, and somehow my application to go was successful. The conference was in Mumbai, India and hosted by Teach for India. We spent a couple of days in classrooms in slum communities in Mumbai, and the rest hearing from the Teach for India guys as well as from each other.

If I do this right, each of these sub-headings will get their own blog post – but with my blogging patterns being the way they’ve been we should all just be thankful if this post ever sees the light of day. So here are my “take-aways” from the conference, in no particular order:

1. Integrity in the classroom

The only way I would want to introduce this point is by relaying a story we heard in the conference. Naturally, it’s a Gandhi story: a mother had a boy who was eating too much sugar. His mother had repeatedly asked her son not to eat sugar, but to no avail. Knowing that her boy respected Gandhi, she took her boy to him to have Gandhi tell her son not to eat so much sugar. As she explained the issue to Gandhi, Gandhi said “come back in a month”. Naturally the mother was confused and a little frustrated, but she nevertheless went away and returned one month later. When she reached Gandhi, he told the boy that sugar was bad for him, and that his mother was right: he should not eat sugar. Of course this infuriated the mother: “Why wouldn’t you tell him this a month ago?” Gandhi’s reply was simple: “Until a month ago, I was eating sugar”.

I’m struck by the way that integrity is not something that is ever discussed in teaching – certainly not in relation to how we interact with our students. There’s a “what they don’t know won’t hurt them” mentality – as long as students don’t know that you don’t really believe what you tell them, it’s OK. Exploring what integrity in my teaching means is certainly a rich vein of thought – and one I intend to continue exploring.

2. Feel, Imagine, Do, Share

This one comes courtesy of Kiran Sethi, who was really impressive in her presentation to us. Kiran was my first introduction to the idea that to enact change we follow a progression of “Feel, Imagine, Do, Share”. First you feel what the problem is and not just from your own perspective. Imagine what the situation could look like, both in a practical planning-type way and in a dreaming type way. Do: Get out there and have a go. Do what it is that you are thinking about. Share: make sure that no matter whether your efforts are a success or a failure (and it’s pretty rare for anything to be either completely), document what you did, so that next time others (or you again) learn from your experiences. I think at different times in life I’ve been much better at one than the others. More thought also required here.

This one came from a workshop, but was a highlight of the week for me. In describing how the Teach for India “fellows” hoped to bring about systemic change in education in India, they described the progression as build self-confidence in who you are and what you are hoping to do, then find others on the same mission and together build the collective confidence, then gradually you expand your locus of control. This made a lot of sense to me as a way of “building a movement” – which was another key part of the time: feeling like I’m part of a global movement to confront educational disadvantage.

4. Take responsibility

Mixed in with the previous point is a very clear call to take responsibility for what I want to see happen in my school. Lots of the past year has been about drawing some very clear boundaries around what I’m responsible for: my classroom. But it’s got to be bigger than that. I feel like this upcoming year has me in a position ready to really start changing some mindsets: in particular in the attitude to students and their potential.

Hopefully all this gives you a bit of an idea of how Mumbai was for me. The optimist inside me says I’ll get a post out about how each of these points is going to look practically for me, the pessimist says that there has barely been a post in the past 6 months. We’ll see.

Well done. Some thoughts for me to ponder over here. Not only do a lot of kids not get to school but the standard of school appears to be very different. Parents do all they can to get kids to school missing out on lots of necessary things and then the schooling isn’t great! I think we will have some more good conversstions.

Hi Geoff,
really enjoyed reading about your trip to India, it seems like it has you thinking deeply about just how powerful an impact teachers can have in their job. Was very interested in your bit on integrity and has me thinking about it as well. Sometimes, i wonder whether students can actually read through the “what they don’t know won’t hurt them'” line. Glad you’re trip was enjoyable and is helping you grow as a teacher.